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Executive Summary:
If you share our view that high levels of transparency are a prerequisite for fairer, safer and more efficient financial services markets that deliver better value for money then you are most welcome to attend this event to learn about our activities.
Please click on Register below to book your place or scroll down to read more, including comments from Leaders of the Five TTF Teams. Thank you for your interest.

Event Details

The Transparency Task Force is an informal but increasingly influential forum dedicated to encouraging greater transparency in financial services, right around the world.

We believe that high levels of transparency are a prerequisite for fairer, safer and more efficient financial services markets that deliver better value for money.

Ultimately we hope to help repair some of the reputational damage that financial services has suffered, for the benefit of all market participants - to be blunt about it the financial services industry has been pre-disposed to self-harm for decades and it’s about time we all work together to clean things up a little.

It’s obvious that greater transparency will help enormously.

The meeting is exclusively for individuals that have not attended a TTF meeting before (unless by special arrangement) and will introduce you to the work of the TTF so you can decide if you wish to engage with our activity in some way; or of course you can just "observe from the sidelines" moving forward, in the knowledge of what we are doing and why.

Apart from anything else it is a great free-to-attend networking opportunity.

The meeting is on Wednesday 4th November, 9:00 for a 9:30 start and ends at 11:00, with optional networking afterwards.

Your presenter will be Andy Agathangelou, Founding Chair of the Transaprency Task Force.

To book your place please click on Register towards the top of the page.

The venue

The central London venue will be advised at least a week before the event.

The Five Teams

We have five teams, each team works on a particular issue and each is led by enlightened individuals determined to make a difference.

Here, some of the leaders account for who they are, what their teams are focused on, and why…

By Steve Conley, a Leader of the TTF’s Data Team:

I’m the Business Development Director of Workplace Pensions Direct, an Auto Enrolment consultancy for small and micro businesses and their professional advisers. Over the years I have played a part in bringing some of the most successful investment opportunities to the UK market.

I lead our Data Team, which is addressing the issue that trustees and investors need to be able to access clear, simple and actionable data. We’re considering all the important dimensions to data including data verification, quality, consistency, standardisation, collation, reconciliation and reporting.

Our work will enable better data evaluation and benchmarking, thereby enabling better-informed decision-making and improved understanding, which in turn will lead to better public engagement.

We are busy identifying the optimal data set and once done we’ll facilitate proofs of concept for data collection, collation and representation.

By Chris Sier, a Leader of the TTF’s Transaction Costs & Charges Team:

I’m the Managing Director of the UK Branch at KAS BANK, a European Custodian Bank and Fund Administration provider. KAS BANK has been at the forefront of the drive towards transparency for pension funds in the Netherlands.

Many UK pension funds lack sufficient knowledge of the hidden transaction costs they may be exposed to. This lack of transparency is a significant problem, for DB & DC, and that is why I’ve volunteered to help lead our Transaction Costs & Charges Team.

We’re busy creating a disclosure framework that will enable schemes to benchmark against relevant peer groups and better understand the true costs involved in achieving excess returns ahead of a relevant benchmark. It will also assist in the passive v active evaluation of managers.

By Henrik Pedersen, a Leader of the TTF Rationale for Decision-Making Team:

I’m Danish with over 25 years of applied financial market and investment experience. I founded Clerus to help pension schemes and other asset owners improve investment decisions, governance and value-for-money, through independent and transparent analysis.

I initiated the TTF’s Rationale for Decision-Making Team because there is a general lack of transparency and accountability around the decision-making process in workplace pensions. This is a huge issue because the long-term interest of all stakeholders in workplace pensions are not aligned and decision-makers are not required to report on how their decisions impact outcomes.

We are working on a methodology that will increase transparency and thereby the quality of decision-making, delivering a positive impact on outcomes.

We also hope to encourage pragmatic regulatory reform that elevates the regulatory lever of transparency above bureaucratic box-ticking regimes.

By Sarah Wilson, a Leader of the TTF’s Stewardship Team:

I’m the CEO and Founder of Manifest, which since 1995 has been the resource for objective corporate governance research and voting services for some of the world’s most demanding institutional investors, governance professionals, academics and professional advisers.

I now also help to lead TTF’s Stewardship Team which is dedicated to raising the levels of transparency around all the important aspects of stewardship including environmental, social & governance considerations, asset holdings complexity, irresponsible & unsustainable investing practices, voting and engagement.

There is a growing interest in “doing stewardship well” rather than compliance-driven box ticking. But without high levels of transparency it is unnecessarily challenging. We’re working collaboratively on ideas that will make it more straightforward to execute a stewardship-savvy strategy well.

It is early days for all the teams but between us we have a wealth of experience and perhaps even more importantly we have an unselfish determination to make a difference.

By Janice Lambert, a Leader of the TTF’s Terms & Conditions Team:

I’m an experienced manager turned independent consultant, with considerable regulatory experience gained working for the Financial Conduct Authority and the Pensions Regulator.

My team is focused on protecting schemes from unfair contract clauses (such as inappropriate NDA’s that prohibit transparency) and to encourage the handling of contract negotiations far earlier in the procurement process, because too many schemes fail to scrutinise contractual detail at the optimal time.

We’re looking to produce a standardised set of transparent terms & conditions, with the widespread involvement of the pensions and investment industry. This will balance the interests of the parties involved more fairly, for the benefit of all in the long run.

Next Steps

If you like the idea of working collaboratively to create better outcomes for all whilst helping to repair the reputational damage of the pensions and investment industries please use Register above to secure your place at our introductory meeting.

To book your place please click on Register towards the top of the page.

When & Where

KAS BANK
11 Westferry Circus
E14 4HD London
United Kingdom

Wednesday, 4 November 2015 from 09:00 to 11:00 (GMT)

Organiser

The Transparency Task Force

The Transparency Task Force is the collaborative, campaigning community dedicated to driving up the levels of transparency in financial services, right around the world.

Members of the Transparency Task Force believe that higher levels of transparency are a pre-requisite for fairer, safer, more stable and more efficient markets being able to deliver better value for money and better outcomes to consumers.

Furthermore, because of the correlation between transparency, truthfulness and trustworthiness, we expect that our work will help to repair the self-inflicted reputational damage the Financial Services Sector has been suffering for decades.

'Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant'

That beautifully simple phrase sums up what the Transparency Task Force is all about. We believe that financial services market behaviour is improved when it is visible; and conversely, that behaviour that is allowed to happen ‘in the shadows’ is often at the expense of the consumer.

This is because, rather notoriously, the Financial Services sector is pre-disposed to opportunistic obfuscation and opacity; it has profited from things being kept hidden from the consumer; sometimes deliberately, sometimes not - things like the true costs of investing, the true performance of products and the true risks that consumers sometimes face.

Opacity leads to asymmetries of information and that's a major concern, because it prevents the consumer being able to make well-informed decisions and thereby stops the market working competitively.

Our Strategy for Driving Change

The Transparency Task Force seeks to operate in a collaborative, collegiate and consensus-building way; focusing on solutions not blame. We seek to effect the change that the financial services sector needs and the consumer deserves.

Our strategy for driving change is to bring together two types of people:

#1, Those with a sense of ‘passion & purpose’ about what needs to be done – such as the thought leader speakers at this event, the ethically-minded financial services professionals, enlightened market participants, pro-consumer campaigners and leading academics who are involved in our community; and

#2, Those with the ‘power & position’ to make change happen – such as the regulators, politicians, financial services leaders, trade bodies and professional associations.

We are an informal but increasingly influential forum - our strategy for driving change seems to be working very well in the UK and we are looking to become a positive influence internationally, because 'opportunistic opacity and obfuscation' in financial services is a global problem.